


The Only Way

by orphan_account



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, At World's End AU, F/M, The Sparrabeth Locker AU, it's the locker but it's not angst miraculously enough, the kiss, well it's not ALL angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-10-29 13:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10854954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "I'm not sorry."Perhaps she is a pirate looking out for her own selfish gains, but a future of guilt doesn't appeal to Elizabeth Swann. At least dying with Jack Sparrow is an adventure worthy of her storybooks.(Or, the AU where Jack gets a companion in the locker.)





	1. Prologue, or A Voyage Closed and Done

_Guilt. Disgust. Fear. Righteousness._

That's what Elizabeth felt, amidst the wreckage and death and despair the Kraken wreaked on the Pearl. Her boot slipped in a bit of gristle—whether it was once part of a fellow crew member or an oversized tentacle, she did not know—and a fire nearby was licking its way across the deck, uncomfortably warm and tall.

Jack's lips moved against her own, his teeth cutting at her bottom lip before his tongue followed to soothe it. Her next step forward was unsteady, and she gripped at Jack's coat, his hair, pushing him back as she advanced on him. Her legs trembled and her pulse thrummed more strongly than it ever had as she kissed him.

She knew he felt it, but Jack made no move to pull her closer or push her away. From her, he took what he was given.

_I always knew you were a good man._

Her left hand strayed down to his right, and she gripped it tightly in silent apology. Jack returned the touch with a squeeze and a flick of his tongue, and Elizabeth withdrew, returning both of her hands to the sturdy wall of his chest. She used them to push until she felt him jolt, his back making contact with the mast, and with another tilt of the head and press of the lips, she shackled him to it.

She could feel the disgust rising in her throat like bile as he looked down at her, resignation and pride and an iota of sorrow mixing on his face.

"It's after you, not the ship. It's not us." She spoke desperately, willing him to understand. "This is the only way, don't you see? I'm not sorry."

 _"Pirate."_  

The fondness in his expression, the understanding and acceptance she found there, became Elizabeth's undoing. He had her measure, and she felt that she would choke on her guilt. The look in his eyes spoke endlessly to her. Swallowing, glancing to Gibbs, she shook her head and leaned forward again, as if to distract him with a kiss, but found herself incapable of it.

"I'm not leaving you."

At that, his face became a slate wiped clean of emotion, and Jack finally touched her, grabbing her arm tightly.

"Lizzy."

Elizabeth pursed her lips, setting her determination in her features, and  "No, Jack. I'm not— You cannot make me leave."

The Pearl began to shudder, and Jack's hand shook on her arm for a bare second. He jangled the chains around the mast at her, but pulled her closer as tentacles began to rise above the deck.

"If you're going stay behind to guard me, then I see no need for your pretty irons, eh?"

Another half-minute and a struggle with the shackle, and Jack was freed, handing her a dagger from his boot as the Kraken surfaced with a bellow. Despite the gravity of it all, Elizabeth had to chuckle grimly at the— _filthy, terrifying, hilarious, unbelievable, improbable_ —situation. Dark, kohl-lined eyes glanced her way, and he took up her hand again as they prepared for the beast in front of them.

_We're not free yet, love._

All that Elizabeth knew next was pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Such are the things that come into being when you read a little too much meta about the kiss on tumblr! (Feel free to find me at mytotino.tumbIr.com.) I don't know where this story will take us, but it's bound to be interesting and feedback is appreciated greatly on the journey.


	2. One

 

"Wake up. Wake up, wake up, _wake up."_

Elizabeth came to with the sound low muttering in her ear. She jolted and gasped, panic fluttering in her chest, but the Kraken was gone, like the suffocating stench and teeth tearing into her flesh—wounds that no mortal could survive—had never existed at all.

Hands squeezed her shoulders. "That's right, come back to ol' Jack..."

"Jack." Her voice was hoarse, and her throat ached with thirst. She blinked, but squeezed her eyes shut soon after, blinded by bright light.

"Elizabeth."

Elizabeth ached as consciousness returned to her, bringing with it an awareness of her situation. The Kraken had _eaten_ her. She had brandished a dagger no longer than the flat of her hand at a giant squid, held onto Jack like he was a lifeline tossed out to sea, and died. Five years ago, Elizabeth would have been breathless at the very thought of such an adventurous end, but its reality was quickly eating away at her teenage self's romantic inclinations.

She never considered what happened after the stories ended.

With the bitterness of regret on her tongue, she opened her eyes to the whitest light she had ever seen.

"We..." She drank up the sight of Jack as her eyes adjusted. His long hair hung around his face as he peered down at her, but did little to block the harsh sunlight from his features. To her relief, he was whole and uninjured, a far cry from her last memory of him. She shuddered to remember it, but knew it was seared into her mind: Captain Jack Sparrow covered in grime, drawing his sword and baring his teeth as he fought to the last, every inch the legend she read about as a child.

Shaking the thought away, she pushed one of his dreadlocks out of her face. His eyes flickered, but Elizabeth paid it no heed. "We're dead."

"Good and dead, love." Jack grimaced, gold teeth glinting at her in the light. "Due in no small measure, 'f course, to _you."_

Beneath Jack's tone lurked something dark and dangerous, but she chose to feign ignorance of it, turning her head to take her first look at the dry, empty, _white_ desert that surrounded them.

"...Oh, _God."_

"Can't say 'm all too pleased with the situation as we find ourselves in it either, but He's not going to help us out anytime soon." He sat back on his heels, still watching her. "Welcome to Davy Jones' Locker, Lizzy."

Horror sunk into in Elizabeth's gut like a leaden stone as she pushed herself up on her elbows. Beyond the deck of the Pearl, the white stretch of land bore no hint of other life, not even water. The air was blazingly hot, dry, and unforgiving. She swallowed hard and shook her head at the thought of eternity on a ship inexplicably stranded in the desert.

"I didn't think..."

"Weren't considering the afterlife when you chained me to my ship, eh?" A smirk twisted up the corners of his mouth, but his eyes were more serious than Elizabeth had ever seen them. "Didn't think it was real?"

"Jack, I—" _I'm sorry. I didn't think it was. I didn't know how much it would hurt. I didn't imagine_ this _. I was planning to leave you, not follow you. I didn't think I would end up here._

A sharp look from Jack silenced those thoughts. Tilting her head, she attempted to affect the teasing bite she used to use with him, but her response was more subdued than she desired. "I thought we would be in separate circles of hell, at the very least."

"Ah, yes. Betrayers and mutineers go to the deepest level." 

Elizabeth flinched. "Is it really a betrayal if I stayed behind?" 

"Semantics." With one long, somber look, Jack stood, tugging the cuffs of his coat to straighten them. "For example, this isn't hell. Surely the crew told you all manner of tales about the locker."

Nodding, Elizabeth followed suit, swaying unsteadily on her feet. Black spots marred her vision, and she swallowed back bile. Her post-mortem journey to the locker, apparently, had not left her completely unscathed.

The last of the anger melted from his face, and Jack jerked his head in the direction of the officer's quarters. "Go sleep. 'S not like we have anything pressing to do, 'n dying is more tiresome than I remember."

"Jack..."

A shake of his head silenced her as he turned on a heel and walked toward his own cabin, a bit more unsteady on his feet than usual. Elizabeth understood.

She was dismissed. 

 

xXx

 

_Lips on hers, the scratch of a beard, hands pushing her back._

_Falling into the ocean. Not the ocean. The beast. The maw. The teeth._

_Tearing and breaking, a leg giving way. An arm being severed at the shoulder._

_A knife lodged in flesh; a final, worthless stab at revenge._

_Darkness._

_Guilt._

 

xXx

 

Elizabeth woke abruptly, and the terror churning in her stomach and crawling up her throat made it feel as if she had never slept at all. The small lamp in the corner was still lit, indicating that she hadn't been asleep for very long, and she sighed. Curling up on the small berth built into the side of the ship, she took stock of her small space, weighing its claustrophobic darkness against the wide, white sea of sand outside.

The officer's quarters were minuscule, but they offered privacy and a door with a lock. Gibbs vacated the space for her use when she joined the crew in Tortuga, and at the time Elizabeth had felt inordinately lucky to escape the wandering eyes and cramped hammocks in the crew's quarters. She always suspected that James and Jack were truly the ones to thank for it; James made no small fuss when Elizabeth ventured into the crew's quarters that first night, and Gibbs left his room with a grumbling that only ever followed one of his superior officers' orders. She had rolled her eyes at the memory of her passage from England, and James evidently remembered it too as he escorted her in, to some protest.

_'Bad luck to have a woman on a ship.' The fact that you are no longer miniature must only be compounding his worries._

Elizabeth almost smiled, hearing the teasing cadence of James's voice in her mind. He always spoke to her in the same proper, stilted lilt, but he had never joked with her like that when they were courting. She had smiled at him then—a bit bitter, but followed by a little laugh—and he had looked so surprised to get such a reaction from her.

Soon after he turned and left her alone in the dark, much like she was now, but the sensation was far from the pleasant cocoon she remembered and more similar to a coffin than she would have liked.

Carefully, she unfolded herself and made the three-step journey across the room, blowing out the lamp as she left. The desert, at least, did not remind her of the esophagus of a Kraken.

The sun-baked deck burned her bare feet as she resurfaced, so she stuck to what shadows she could find beside the gunwale and under the masts. It was only when she rounded the main mast that she found Jack staring at the ground beside it, and for a moment she was frightened that he might be reliving their final moments.

"Sun hasn't moved."

Elizabeth stared, guilt-thick relief flooding her veins. "What?"

"The sun. It's not moving."

"So... time."

"'S not changing."

"We're stuck in a sunny waste forever." She nodded. That seemed like something Davy Jones would do to torment those in his debt.

Jack quirked an unamused eyebrow at her neutral tone, clearly expecting more of a reaction. "You condemned yourself, love."

"I know."

He didn't reply immediately. Instead, with a glance to her feet, he led the way through the shadows to the steps they used to sit on to talk, setting himself down beside a bottle of rum and patting the space beside him. _"You_ were supposed to be sleeping."

"I thought you were going to sleep, too."

Jack's lips turned down in a familiar petulant frown, and Elizabeth had to fight her first true grin since she died at the sight of it. "Someone's got to keep watch 'round here, lest we be ambushed by locker beasties of similar magnitude of that which killed us. Captain's orders were sleep, Miss Swann."

Elizabeth snorted. "Night terror. You?"

 _"Night terror...?"_ The frown deepened, and Jack took a swig from the bottle, holding it out to Elizabeth afterward. "For ol' times sake...?"

Elizabeth wiped off the lip of the bottle and drank, choking slightly on the burn of rum; it was stronger and rougher than what Jack usually shared with her.

"Had my tongue in that mouth not five hours ago, Lizzy. Kind of useless now."

A nudge, bordering on a kick, of Jack's shin silenced him, and Elizabeth shrugged. "I don't think we'll have enough rum on this ship to drown out the terrors forever, will we?"

"Only what little escaped dear William's grand plan to blow the sea beastie to bits. Two weeks, at most." He leaned closer. "Now, about this terror..."

"I've had them since I was a little girl, Jack. Between our recent, gruesome death and the small, dark hole I sleep in on this ship, they have likely returned for good." Another sip burned Elizabeth again, but she was prepared and held her breath for a few moments to until it faded. She wasn't sure whether the last several hours of her existence or the rum prompted her eyes to begin watering, but she quickly blinked back the tears, pressing the cuff of her shirt covertly to her eyes.

Jack said nothing and liberated the bottle from her grasp. He took a long drink, his brow wrinkling beneath his bandana as he thought.

"You're welcome to my cabin."

_"Jack!"_

Elizabeth reached for the rum again, intent on smashing the bottle over Jack's head in her indignant rage, but he pulled away and shuffled down the steps before she could, moving into a sunny spot. She glared at the deck beneath his feet, cursing her casual disregard of her boots, and crossed her arms.

"'M not going t'be sleeping much, tha's all I mean. 'S long as you don't mind me coming in and out every now and then, the bed is all yours, Elizabeth. Cabin's got windows, 's big, won't feel dark or small in there if this sun never sets."

 She raised an incredulous brow. "...You're sure."

"Certain."

"I _killed_ you."

His lips pursed at that and his gaze darkened, but he offered the rum to her again. "Killed yourself too."

"Fine."

Jack's expression morphed into the infuriating, self-satisfied grin he always affected whenever he won an argument with her. "Fine. Now, it's too bloody hot for a bonfire 'n I'm not burning down me ship, but let's see if we can't get you to dance again, eh?"


	3. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was busy traveling through Europe for the past couple of weeks, so please forgive the short update and long wait! Much more is on the way for our Locker dwellers.
> 
> Trigger warning: suicide.

Hours later, Jack was reclining in the plush chair at his desk, staring over the charts in front of him at the woman in his bed. Lizzy slept fitfully, her brow scrunched, indicating that her dreams were not peaceful despite their joint efforts. He twisted the braided ends of his beard as he watched her; the murderess had free access to his cabin and his limited supply of rum, and he didn't once think that she might not deserve his kindness.

Jack sighed.

He would have stayed behind without her trickery. He would have died for Elizabeth Swann for far less than a kiss. Had that not been clear when he made no move to help load the longboat? Didn't she think he was a _good man_ in those last moments? Jack snorted at that. Of course  _goodness_ and _kindness_  led to this. Goodness had never served him well before.

Of course, a far lesser part of him did not wish to see his crew or Bootstrap's son die fighting a battle that wasn't their own, but he could have buried that guilt more easily. His crew knew what they signed on for, and William probably would have died the noble death by his dear fiancée's side that he practically foamed at the mouth for when Jack first met him.

 _Fiancée_. She wasn't even his, and he still would have died for her. Selfishly, because he was certain that Will and Norrington had never _died_ for the girl, but no one else needed to know the underlying motivation.

Funny, the way she seemed to make martyrs of her admirers.

_Gods, that kiss— What would a kiss of real gratitude feel like, coming from her?_

He took another swig of rum and tried not to think of the dwindling supply.

 xXx

_She was sprawled atop his sheets, dozing lazily in the muted sunshine. Fully clothed, but a perfect picture of the pirate Jack imagined her to be on the rum runners' isle._

_"You killed me." His words were low, more a statement than an accusation. It was the same conversation from earlier, but now she was halfway through a bottle of rum._

_Her response was slow and slurred, but immediate. "You left us."_

_"...That I did, love."_

_"An' I was angry."_

_"Oh?"_

_"You left me for the Kraken, 'nd I thought you were a good man."_

_"I came back, did I not?"_

_"After you left."_

"Pirate."

_Lizzy sighed miserably, and Jack's eyebrows shot up beneath his bandana, his eyes darting to her face. He expected to find something less heart-wrenching and altogether more delightful than the sadness etched into her features, but there it was. The downward curve of her pretty lips, her coffee-eyes scrunched shut, her brows pulled together—all spoke of a conflict greater than Jack necessarily wished to comprehend, so soon after dying._

_"'M so sorry, Jack."_

_They were quiet for a long moment. The anger underneath Jack's breastbone burned too hotly to accept her apology, but her rather voluntary presence in the Locker muted it enough to prevent a scathing reply._

_"Why did you come back? Were you going to stay?"_

_"Why chain me to the mast? Why commit suicide?"_

_They were silent again, and soon Elizabeth turned over, pulled the quilt up around her chin, and fell asleep._

xXx

Suicide had always left a more bitter taste in Jack's mouth than murder. He wondered idly if Elizabeth killed herself to simply assuage her guilt over condemning him, or whether she possessed more pressing issues that he ought to wheedle out of her at some point.

He wouldn't put up with botched suicide attempts—or worse, a successful one—in the meantime. (He shuddered to think of it. Where would she go, if she already suffered in the Locker? Another place in the Locker? Hell? Not any sort of heaven, at this point. And would she heal if she injured herself and didn't die, or just be some eternally injured shade of herself?) If she left him, it would have been much easier to hate her, but he wouldn't spend an eternity driving his only companion to suicide.

 _You are not your father_. The old mantra slithered through his mind, and Jack cringed. He stopped thinking like that after his first run-in with Cutler Beckett.

Wiping the thought from his mind, Jack leaned back and tilted his hat over his eyes. If he couldn't sleep, he would attempt meditation.

Under the brim of the tricorne, his eyes lingered on the woman in his bed.

Yes, he would meditate on the upcoming onslaught of vexation he would face. What was it Tia Dalma said?

_Changing._

_Harsh._

_Untamable as the sea._

If he were lucky, his heart would stay in his chest where it belonged.


	4. Three

Time passed slowly in the Locker.

Elizabeth mostly remained in the cabin, lethargic and dispassionate about their new existence, but Jack spent most of his time on the quarterdeck above her. At first, the constant thudding of his footsteps drove her mad, and she was set to storm out into the sunlight and tie him to the helm, if that was what it took to make him stay still. Every time she began preparing to get out of bed or pull on her boots, however, Jack would swing in through the door and rifle through his belongings to reveal a stash of old, weathered books or a box of plundered jewels.

The look in his eyes always suggested that he was getting something more out of showing her those things than she was by receiving them.

Still, _Robinson Crusoe_  made the inescapable cabin fever of the Locker somewhat tolerable again. Elizabeth briefly wished that she were talented in sewing garments, if only to have something to do with the beautiful stash of stolen silks and linens Jack showed her one day in the _Pearl's_ hold, but she brushed the thought aside with ease. Her short foray into ladies' sewing lessons was not an enjoyable one for anyone involved, especially her father, who gamely wore everything she made him at least once.

At the thought of her father, Elizabeth always found herself tucking her chin and placing a hand over her eyes, trying to self-soothe before she could burst into tears. Very little moved her to great emotion since arriving in the Locker, but imagining her father discovering the horrific death of his only child alongside a notorious pirate managed it easily.

Her sweet, bereaved father, who did his best to free her from the gallows and never quite recovered from her mother's death. 

He was at Beckett's mercy now, and she wasn't sure whether he would become a pawn or a victim. She closed her eyes and remembered the last time she saw him: his back, turned to her, and the foreboding stillness of the captain meant to whisk her away to distant relatives in England. She didn't dare to imagine what he thought when the carriage was revealed to be empty, but she ended up fixated on the imagined horror in his expression when she crept through the moonlit alleys of Port Royal in her tattered wedding dress.

 _And what of James? Or Will, for that matter?_ Her mind taunted her. _What must_ they _be thinking?_

James didn't deserve her pity, because she was certain he stole the heart and left them for the Kraken even before she tried to do the same, but _Will_... Will, who kept watch over her in that final battle, who begged her to shoot at the rum and powder, knowing it would likely kill him if she did so. Did he try to climb back aboard the _Pearl_ after her, or did Gibbs understand her dying wish and keep him restrained?

If the afterlife had rules of etiquette, she would probably be considered vain for imagining the depths of his grief, but she found she did not care. Those same rules likely drew the legitimacy of any continued relationship with Will into question, as death had parted them, and Elizabeth found herself more ambivalent about that potential clause than she had any right to be as a loving fiancée.

What was it like, for the people she loved, to exist in a world where she did not?

Then again, she could count those people on one hand. It didn't matter very much, if she thought of it that way.

xXx

She and Jack ate and drank through the Pearl's supply slowly; one extended experiment revealed that they wouldn't suffer too badly from hunger or thirst, but the act of eating gave them a reason to sit at a table they set up on the deck and pretend they were alive again. Neither dressed for the occasion; Elizabeth always appeared in her shirtsleeves and bare feet, and Jack came in whatever state of undress he decided to grace the day with, lending a far more casual tone to the meals than their previous encounters.

However, they were both dreadful cooks, and their meals were always burned or sickeningly undercooked, no matter how casual they became.

It was at one such meal of salted cod—the first in roughly two days, if Elizabeth was keeping track of time correctly—that Jack jumped, his knees hitting the underside of the table hard enough to send her plate into her lap.

"Jack!"

Elizabeth glared, but Jack was staring at something near the bow of the ship. She followed his gaze after a sharp look at his bottle of rum; what she found was the same view of the dark, empty deck of the Pearl and the blinding desert that had greeted them since their first day in the Locker, so she picked a piece of cod off of her lap and threw it at his face.

"Oi!"

"Is there a reason you've decided that the last of the cod belongs on the deck?"

Picking the rehydrated fish projectile from his dreadlocks, Jack squinted at her, but she noticed his attention deviate toward the bow again. His body language spoke of something on par with Davy Jones, in all of his tentacled, slimy glory: the twitch of his lip, fingers stretching and curling, the tense set of his shoulders. With another inquisitive glance at Elizabeth, it all melted away from his countenance as he was put the last piece of her cod in his mouth.

"Just wanted it for meself, love."

Elizabeth huffed, and he grinned smugly at her, wiggling his eyebrows beneath his bandana. "Jack."

"How 'bout I teach you how to handle a gun today, eh? Ol' Will can't have taught you how to play with that sword of his and still have the energy to teach you proper marksmanship. Though I do have my doubts about the swordplay, as well."

_"Jack."_

"Unless, of course, ol' Will exhausted our supply of gunpowder over the course of his unhinged plan..."

Elizabeth nicked the rest of the cod off of Jack's plate, frowning at him across the table. If he was going to insult Will and ruin her dinner, she would steal his in return.

"I know how to shoot a gun, Jack. Cotton taught me, remember?"

Jack finally stopped speaking and looked at her. "Cotton taught you how to load a pistol and pull the trigger, aye, but your aim is appalling. Nay, abominable." He paused and watched her lips move as she chewed, glancing pointedly at his plate when she met his eyes. "And where did you acquire that little morsel, I wonder?"

"Pirate." She picked apart what was left of the fish, but kept the pieces for herself. "You said it, not I."

"With the best of them, my merry murderess."

The curl of Jack's lips was not entirely happy this time, and the salt from the cod turned to dust in Elizabeth's mouth. With a sigh, she ate the last of her meal, trying not to look at him as she did. Jack had done everything but mention forgiveness in recent weeks. She knew he was still smarting from her trickery, but his jibes always made her ache.

"Lizzy." Jack paused, then shook his head minutely at her and whisked their plates away from the table. He stood, swaying. "Go get the rifle from the cabin 'n I'll go try to find bullets 'n powder in the hold. Prob'ly isn't shrewd to teach you how to pick me off at a distance, but might as well commit ourselves to a more useful undertaking."

 _Lizzy_. Elizabeth set her jaw and nodded, the warmth that accompanied Jack's once-hated nickname for her soothing the raw guilt her betrayal always managed to dredge up in her soul.

"Now, the _Black Pearl_ is a magnificent ship and much too pretty for pockmarks by your hand, so we will be conducting our lessons in the vast desert that lies before us," he remarked, sensing the change in her. Elizabeth simply shifted her weight to the railing beside her and placed a hand on a sizable gouge that she had noticed when she first boarded the _Pearl_ as Barbossa's unwitting captive. Jack's eyes narrowed, but he didn't bother to address it, instead shooing her toward his cabin with his free hand. "Go get your boots and the gun, missy."

xXx

Two hours later, Elizabeth was aiming at the back of a rickety chair Jack found in the galley, pressing the butt of the rifle into the meaty flesh of her shoulder. A warm hand wrapped around her own on the barrel while the other lifted her elbow, raising the rifle's sight and her head with it. Jack's hair came into her field of view, and he nodded before turning his attention to her. His inky eyes were, at least, entirely sober and serious, even as he seemed to raise every bit of advice he granted her as a challenge to be overcome.

"Ye cannot be shy about the form, Lizzy. If ye're going to shoot a man, be quick and true 'bout it, so he can't recover to turn his sights on you and return fire. 'Sides, an expeditious death is a blessing, as you and I well know from experience."

He moved out of her line of vision, but his presence lingered at her back, the hem of his jacket tickling the backs of her knees. Far enough to deny any ulterior motives, she knew, but close enough to watch her take aim and peer across the sight himself. Her arm ached from suppressing a tremble as she swallowed her breath and pulled the trigger. The crack of the shot and recoil of the rifle became a second thought once dark, heavy hair descended onto her shoulder while Jack looked around her at the new hole in the chair.

"Don' stop breathing, love." Jack's cheek twitched against her own, amusement clear in his tone, and he backed away. "Ye got close, but that shot wouldn'ta killed a man."

"What part of a man am I aiming at, exactly, that resembles a chair that every pirate on your crew has dug a knife into at least once?"

"I was thinking his chest, but do share if you're imagining a more compelling part."

Elizabeth wasn't imagining _any_ compelling part, but the suggestion made her face grow warm as she lowered the rifle and turned. "I will not."

"Won't ye?" Jack reentered her personal space with a smirk, a bullet, and more powder. "Load it for me, Lizzy."

With a fixed glance, she began to reload the rifle, carefully ignoring Jack's proximity. "Powder, patch, ball... Rod, _push,_ replace... Frizzen."

Jack was serious again, and he examined the rifle as she held it before giving a single nod. "Aye. Now, aim and cock it, and don' forget the form this time."

"How shall I, when you're critiquing my every move?"

"I will admit that the particular form in front of me presents quite the captivating sight to behold, yes, but its knees are too stiff."

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched against her will. "I am holding a loaded gun, Jack."

"Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice..."

An irritated huff from Elizabeth, whose arms were beginning to ache, stopped Jack, and he returned to his distracting, infuriating position inches from her back. She mourned for a brief moment that she could not shoot him for mouthing off if he was behind her, but the return of his jacket's hem and the subtle breeze of his breath on her shoulder began to drive her to distraction again.

"That green stain in the corner is the heart. Fire when ready, Lizzy."

Elizabeth exhaled, loosened her limbs, and found the target in her sights with ease. Her finger tightened on the trigger, and she inhaled, pulling the slim metal toward her. It caught and then sharp sound of gunshot cracked across the desert once more, sending the bullet flying forward. The increasingly familiar scent of burnt powder filled the stagnant air, and she narrowed her eyes at the chair as she lowered the rifle.

"Well, would ye look at that."

Jack's voice in her ear made her jump, but Elizabeth kept her eyes on the small, jagged hole that used to be a green stain. 

"What say you we celebrate? I think we have half a ration of rum to split 'tween the two of us, but I might have some brandy in me cabin."

"You aren't going to make me practice more?" She raised an incredulous brow, turning to face Jack. Her nose bumped against his cheek—the man truly had no sense of personal space since they died—and he pulled back with a grin and a shrug. He had kept her in the desert for what felt like hours, explaining every divot and detail on his rifle and hammering his idea of proper form into her brain, and she hadn't expected to be allowed to quit after one perfect shot.

"Ideally, yes, but we have run out of gunpowder."

"Oh."

 _"Oh_. C'mon, grab the chair. Drinks and that book of yours await."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for being patient with me again. As always, I love your feedback and can't wait to get started on the next chapter!


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